PROFIT, PIETY
AND THE PROFESSIONS
IN LATER MEDIEVAL
ENGLAND
Edited by
MICHAEL HICKS
ALAN SUTTON
First published in the United Kingdom in 1990
Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, Brunswick Road, Gloucester
First published in the United States of America in 1990
Alan Sutton Publishing Inc., Wolfeboro Falls, NH 03896-0848
Copyright © Michael Hicks, Roger Virgoe, Clive Burgess,
P.J.P. Goldberg, Rhidian Griffiths, Nigel Ramsay, Mark Beilby,
Brigette Vale, Michael Stansfield, Linda Clark, Margaret Condon, 1990
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publishers and copyright holders
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Profit, piety and the professions in later medieval England.
1. England, history
I]. Hicks, M.A. (Michael A.)
942
ISBN 0-86299-643-0
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
Jacket illustration: To Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple
(A.C. Cooper Ltd).
Typesetting and origination by
Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, Gloucester
Printed in Great Britain by
Dotesios Printers Limited
Contents
ABBREVIATIONS si soormteconenmabiates gnosis coat geminneee Paabedidnsies
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE CALL-NUMBERS ................064.
INTRODUCTION: sisi teat net actonn cineca doe onat Hates Wasp dee nee
1.
10.
ROGER VIRGOE
Aspects of the County Community in the Fifteenth Century
. CLIVE BURGESS
Late Medieval Wills and Pious Convention: Testamentary
Evidence Reconsidered ...........cssecsececescesencescnssecesenees
. P.J.P. GOLDBERG
Women’s Work, Women’s Role, in the Late Medieval North
. RHIDIAN GRIFFITHS
Prince Henry and Wales, 1400-1408 .............c.cceceeeeeeees
. NIGEL RAMSAY
What was the Legal Profession? .............cscseeceeeeeeeeeeeeees
. MARK BEILBY
The Profits of Expertise: The Rise of the Civil Lawyers and
Ghanicery Equity 4.sec..amen anincannsanecae 24 re vane lade sendacw one «ee
. BRIGETTE VALE
The Profits of the Law and the ‘Rise’ of the Scropes: Henry
Scrope (d. 1336) and Geoffrey Scrope (d. 1340) Chief
Justices to Edward II and Edward III ...............c.cccceceeeeee es
. MICHAEL STANSFIELD
John Holland, Duke of Exeter and Earl of Huntingdon (d.
1447) and the Costs of the Hundred Years War ............066.
. LINDA CLARK
The Benefits and Burdens of Office: Henry Bourgchier
(1408-83), Viscount Bourgchier and Earl of Essex, and the
Treasurership of the Exchequer ..............scceceeeeceeeeeenenes
MARGARET CONDON
From Caitiff and Villain to Pater Patriae: Reynold Bray and
the-Profitsiof Ofhee: Awe tne wiscs aww eecurenead ep etaesamontnne ets
72
91
103
119
137
169
10
From Caitiff and Villain to Pater Patriae:
Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office!
Margaret Condon
Assistant Keeper, Public Record Office
Two main themes emerge from a study of the estates of Reynold Bray,
chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster (1485-1503), treasurer of England
(1486) and sworn councillor of the King (1485-1503). The first is so
familiar as almost to be a platitude: the profit of office and power was
visible wealth. New riches encouraged investment in land, whence came
an increase in profit and diversification in the sources of income, bringing,
in turn, yet further acquisitions of real estate. The second theme is of some
historiographical significance, and is inherent within the range of sources
available to the would-be chronicler of Bray’s career. The restrictions
imposed by the nature of the record material present a recurrent challenge.
The solutions adopted have a relevance and application beyond the
subject of Bray alone and an essay on Bray’s estates can be read as a study
in the uses of evidence. For there are no receivers’-general accounts, no
general surveys or valors to list, summarize or value Bray’s property; no
family tradition or pattern of inheritance within Reynold’s immediate
history to flesh out the skeleton, to explain the dynamics of the expansion
and management of the estates, or to preserve his archive as a coherent
collection; no surviving inquisitions post mortem to provide a comprehen-
sive and retrospective overview. Despite the interminable length of Bray's
will, it, too, is woefully inadequate in the information it provides, and the
alienation of parcels of the accumulated lands began almost immediately
after Bray’s death. The historian must look elsewhere: to the records of the
courts at Westminster, and in dark and sometimes unexpected corners for
documents held in disparate, but publicly accessible, collections. A
secondary theme is the way in which Bray’s past and continuing service to
Margaret Beaufort (d. 1509) informed and at times assisted the pattern
and the process of his acquisitions, the further consolidation of his estates,
and his choice of feoffees and estate officers. It has also, coincidentally,
preserved for us some of the most intimate records of his activities.
138 PROFIT, PIETY AND THE PROFESSIONS
Reynold Bray was already a mature adult, when he first appears as
receiver-general of Sir Henry Stafford (son of the first Duke of
Buckingham) and his wife, Margaret Beaufort. Bray’s father, Richard, and
a brother, John, enjoyed lesser offices within the same service.” Reynold is
commonly thought to be the eldest son of his father’s second marriage.’
His minimal endowment reflects that order of precedence, although
neither father nor son seem to have possessed lands in themselves
sufficient to support their status as gentlemen. Forty years later Bray’s
position had altered beyond all recognition. The battle of Bosworth
transformed his career. By his death on 5 August 1503 Bray was one of the
most influential men in England, one of the most prominent of all Henry
VII's councillors, and one of the few with ready access to the person and
mind of the King himself. To juxtapose the descriptions of two contem-
poraries, one a critic, the other an admirer, and both polemical, the
‘caitiff and villain of simple birth’ had been transformed into ‘pater
patriae’.* In less than two decades Reynold built up an estate sufficient to
qualify his heirs for two peerages, Bray and Sandys. Ten of Edmund Bray’s
eleven children were female and thus that peerage fell into abeyance in
1557 on the premature death of his son John Lord Bray.* Bray’s lands were
scattered through eighteen counties at their greatest extent, although
there had been some consolidation before Bray’s death. Writs for
inquisitions post mortem issued into eight counties, but not a single retum
now survives.° Reynold Bray had no heir of his own body to inherit his
estates and the eventual settlement did not accurately reflect his wishes. ’
Before 1485 Bray’s salary as receiver-general was probably augmented by
the fees of other offices within Henry Stafford’s gift. The expenses of his
peripatetic life were met largely by his lord. He was a frequent and
welcome guest at Henry and Margaret’s table, and in their company he
dwelled within the household.’ His patrimony may have been merely a
house and some land in the parish of St John in Bedwardine, Wor-
cestershire, where he was born.” He bought a tenement in Wells,
convenient for his periodic visits to Somerset as receiver-general, and
added in 1483 the Hampshire manor of Flood. !° More substantial were his
acquisitions by marriage (probably between 1475 and 1478) to the much
younger Katherine, daughter and co-heir of Nicholas Hussey, a former
victualler of Calais.'' Bray’s initial gains are by no means clear, and the
full potential of his investment may not have been realized until his own
accession to power after 1485. Katherine thus brought him claims to the
manors of South Moreton in Berkshire and Freefolk in Hampshire, where,
for anight in November 1497, Henry VII was to enjoy Bray’s hospitality in
the course of their victorious return from Exeter.!* They may have
obtained more immediate entry into other lands. The formal division of
Hussey’s estates between the co-parcenors occurred in 1478, although the
Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office 139
complexity of the arrangements made to define and secure title in the
lands that were to pass to Reynold and Katherine suggests that the
settlement was not straightforward. Bray and his wife were to have
Standen Huse (in Hungerford, Berkshire) and 40 marks of land from the
newly dismembered manor of Harting, formerly the caput of Nicholas
Hussey’s lands. The manor, and the bulk of the Sussex estates, passed to
Katherine’s elder sister, Constance, and her husband, Henry Lovell. Yet
despite ambiguous evidence of receipts from Harting in 1475 and, more
clearly, the citation of Harting as an alternative alias in his pardon of
1484, by 1489 Bray was petitioning John Morton as chancellor that the
feoffees appointed in 1478 should give him seisin. Judgement was then
swiftly given in his favour. !?
For twenty years before Bosworth Bray was the trusted servant of
Margaret Beaufort and her husbands Henry Stafford and Thomas, Lord
Stanley. Stafford’s first will reveals him bound in substantial sums on his
master’s behalf. Margaret was Stafford’s sole executrix, but Bray was to
play a prominent part in the settlement of her estates and, in Stafford’s
final will, of 1471, Bray was the sole legatee (appropriately, of a grizzled
horse) outside the immediate family. '* It is unclear when Bray first became
armigerous and later tradition assigned to his father the same arms, but it is
more likely that they belong to 1485 and Henry VII's coronation, when he
was knighted and his arms recorded by the heralds. In his one contem-
porary portrait, the eagle’s foot erased ‘a cuise’ of the house of Stanley is
the most prominent charge on the surcoat depicting his own arms.!°
Bray’s part in the revolution of 1485 is well known. He was probably not at
ho peels initially have remained with Margaret Beaufort, who
assig im rooms at Coldharbour, the victory gift given her by her son,
and now refurbished for her use.!© But on 13 September 1485 he was
appointed chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster for life, with a fee of 100
marks p.a., by mid-October he was acting as under-treasurer in the
Exchequer, he was knighted at the coronation, and on 28 February 1486,
in an appointment with few precedents for a commoner, he became
treasurer of England.'’ Although he held this great office only briefly,
lasting only until 10 July, he did so at a politically critical time. Lord
Treasurer Bray and his under-treasurer Avery Cormburgh each lent the
crown over £1,600 and made assignments to repay over £3,500 advanced
largely by the merchant community shortly before they took office. As
King’s councillor, Bray had earlier himself fronted Henry’s urgent request
for short term loans to support his infant regime. In later years Reynold’s
lent from his own resources and a rolling cycle of loan, repayment in cash,
and new loan, but in 1486 it seems more probable that he was a front man
140 PROFIT, PIETY AND THE PROFESSIONS
for money provided from elsewhere. !® Even after Lord Dynham became
treasurer in July, Bray continued to act closely with him in the Exchequer
for the rest of the century. The story of Bray’s public career is to be told
elsewhere;!? it is the way in which public office helped him to private
profit that concerns us here.
Bray’s long service had earned Henry VII’s gratitude and laid the
foundation of an enduring special relationship. Offices, major and minor,
worth well over £130 p.a. even without the treasurership, acknowledged
his loyalty, his services and his abilities.2° His patents and knighthood
were his reward and a mark of public honour and thanks. He was not
granted lands, but patronage, political manipulation and the process of the
law combined with a timely and well-targeted opportunism enabled Bray
to secure his fortunes by entering the property market.
Bray’s first purchase is significant for more than the quality of his
investment. The manor of Chelsea he acquired in the summer of 1486 was
to form one of the principal endowments for Katherine Bray’s
widowhood?! and was sufficiently attractive for Henry VIII to force an
exchange on William Sandys, to whom it had descended, in 1535.7?
Behind the ordered language of the writ of right pleaded to secure Bray’s
title, a complex of forces were at work. In Chelsea, as elsewhere, some
may only be deduced or suspected. Of others we have more certain
knowledge because Bray, as an experienced searcher for evidence for
Margaret Beaufort’s disputes, frequently had his own deeds enrolled in
Chancery or common pleas, obtained exemplifications of the legal
processes which secured his possession, and of copies of documents, public
or private, and historical matter pertinent to his title.
The entry on the De Banco roll proclaims only the customary legal
fictions necessary to convey Chelsea to Bray; a related action placed the
vendor’s title on record. But the charters enrolled reveal the vendor as
Robert Shorditch esquire, whose son George was required to give
additional warranty.”? Is it entirely coincidence that that same Trinity
term 1486, also Bray’s final term as treasurer, one Robert Shorditch,
former clerk of the spicery of Edward IV, was allowed to plead his pardon
for a debt of £6 17s 3d on his account??* An indenture between Reynold
and Robert specifically safeguarded Bray against execution for debt and
Robert’s other land sales suggest financial embarrassment. Even allowing
for improvements and additions by Bray, the purchase price was no more
than 10-12 times its annual value, well below the common market rate of
18-20 years’ purchase.” As in some other purchases, political pressure is
hinted at, for the sale was made, not directly to Bray, but to Elizabeth,
Dowager-Duchess of Norfolk. Bray was ultimate beneficiary, the duchess
Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office 141
being reimbursed (or, rather, Robert paid) with 700 marks of the ‘goodys
of . . . Sir Reynold’. The eminence grise behind this extraordinary and
obscure arrangement was Margaret Beaufort, at whose ‘speciall desire,
instance and requeste’ the duchess acted. Elizabeth was also induced to sell
to Bray an additional house and 40 acres of land, which ‘late were Richard
Beauchamp, late bishop of Sarisbury’ and had, presumably, come to her by
inheritance.*° These transactions raise more questions than can easily be
answered, but clearly all is not what it seems.
Chelsea also introduces another recurrent theme: Bray’s reconstruction
of a history, real or supposed, for himself and its concrete expression
through a necessarily interrupted title to, and association with, land. Thus
we find that Chelsea was held legitimately, but for a finite term, by one
John Bray of Chiswick under Richard II. This John held the manor by
virtue of a contingent remainder; after his death it passed to William
Atwater, mentioned by name in the legal processes of 1486. A deposition
by John Shorditch, father of Robert, recording this descent, is now among
the archives of Westminster Abbey, a location suggesting that the
document was part of the legal brief for Bray’s acquisition of Chelsea, and
that he was well acquainted with its contents.2” This same awareness of
pedigree, status, and self-image perhaps prompted Bray’s purchase in 1502
of an interest in East Haddon (Northants.). A connection between it and
the name of Bray could be traced to the thirteenth century, in the
accessible source known as Kirkby’s Quest, and from 1497 Bray quartered
(by grant of the heralds) the arms of the ancient, knightly,
Northamptonshire family of Bray with his own.78 Quasi-historicism also
passes fleetingly through the history of Great Rissington Manor (Glos.)
and may explain his purchase in 1498 of land in a county in which he had
no other material interest. But land in Great Rissington had been held at
the turn of the fourteenth century by Henry Hussey, from whom
Katherine was lineally descended, and through whom she was connected,
in the cadet line, with the minor baronial family of that name. Its
mid-fifteenth-century alienation may have lain within living memory.??
Moreover, it was clearly Reynold Bray’s intention that the Hussey
inheritance, divided between Katherine and her sister, should be again
united through the marriages of Katherine’s heirs general, the daughters of
her elder sister, to males of his own name and lineage, although their
prospects might have commanded a greater match.*° Consistent in spirit
were the dubious claims to inheritance pleaded by Bray for South Moreton
(Berks.), of which Katherine’s great-grandfather had died seised in 1409,
and Freefolk in Hampshire. In both cases, despite conflicting evidence
offered by puzzled jurors, the courts gave judgement for Bray. In South
Moreton there may have been genuine confusion, for Henry Hussey
appears to have alienated the manor by way of mortgage. But clients of
142 PROFIT, PIETY AND THE PROFESSIONS
Margaret Beaufort who witnessed subsequent charters and enfeoffments
could have supplied Bray with pertinent information, and the final stages
of the conveyance to Reynold are certainly fictitious, with a supposed
default by the Duke of Suffolk on a bond of statute merchant.*! Bray’s
claims to Freefolk were disputed in earnest, but after the case remained
unsettled at the Winchester assizes, the defendants seem to have bowed to
force majeure and reached a compromise which gave Bray possession. An
uneasy conscience is suggested by the separation by his will of Freefolk
from the main estate in favour of his nephew Richard Andrewes, husband
of Elizabeth Rogers, one of the two co-parcenors dispossessed in 1487-8. °?
Nor were Reynold’s heirs entirely free from the taint of the self-made man:
Brays of the sixteenth ‘century and beyond concocted an illustrious
genealogy for themselves.
The second major acquisition of 1486 cemented more personal links.
Woking (Surrey) was a favourite house of Margaret Beaufort and thus a
principal residence of Bray (also the estate’s steward), and was frequently
visited by Henry VII before and after his mother gave it to him in 1503.3#
Bray had forged enduring ties with its bailiff, John Bigge, and with several
burgesses of nearby Guildford, in whose friary his mother was buried. *°
Bray was appointed parker of Guildford by Henry VII, without account
and with issues, from 5 September 1485, perhaps the occasion of their first
post Bosworth-meeting. When the grant was renewed and augmented in
October 1486, confirming wages of £18 5s p.a. and adding the keepership
of Claygate park, the original letters patent (now lost) were cited with a
date of 5 September.*° This background makes the life grant to Bray by
Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond, 28 January 1486, of the manor of Shere,
about five miles east of Guildford, a particularly graceful one. Henry’s first
parliament reversed Ormond’s attainder and confirmed his title to the
lands of his inheritance including Shere, granted by Edward IV to Lord
Audley. Audley’s political light was dimmed, but not extinguished, and he
sat with Ormond on Henry VII's council. Despite Ormond’s new honours,
his elevation to the peerage, and his appointment as chamberlain of
Elizabeth of York, he may still have felt in need of friends. Diplomacy was
necessary to profit immediately from his restoration, while his Irish title
left his revenues vulnerable to the continuance of the king’s favour.>”
Similar insecurity may have moved the restored Ricardian Lord Dynham
to grant Horley (Oxon.) to Bray for life.*® Ormond’s initial gift, too, was a
life tenancy, reserving rights of hunting and hospitality, but in 1495 Bray
purchased Shere outright.*? Audley also bid for Bray’s friendship with a
£10 annuity from Somerset (in practice drawn in part from Audley’s
Surrey estates) and the life-grant of the lands he had added to Shere manor
during his occupation. This grant was confirmed by his son James, who
sold Bray these extramanorial lands in 1497, and Henry VII continued the
Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office 143
annuity after James’s attainder.*° Bray’s legal title to the Audley lands in
Cranley and Shere was ultimately accepted, for they passed, in time, to
Edmund Bray.*! Reynold continued to improve and expand Shere and
drew produce from Claygate for his household at Shere.*? And is it
without significance that in 1500 Shere church possessed ‘a suit of red
damask, with greyhounds’, when a greyhound was one of the two principal
supporters of Henry VII's royal arms?”?
Until about 1492 Bray expanded his estates by drawing on his growing
wealth, power and royal favour to exploit the political pressures, private
ambitions and the instinct for self-preservation of the several parties
concerned. The names of Bray’s feoffees testify to the continuing strength
of his Beaufort connections: ** indeed, he remained Margaret’s receiver-
general, although increasingly conducting routine by deputy. His wife did
not wholly forsake her place in Margaret’s household even after joining
the queen’s.*? But it was Henry VII who authorized the single most
important addition to Bray’s estates, supplying them with a focus that
engrossed Bray for the rest of his life.
In July 1486 Henry VII had made Bray steward, receiver and surveyor of
the Bedfordshire manors of Eaton, Houghton Regis and Totternhoe, with
Ledburn and Mentmore in Buckinghamshire, forfeited by Lord Zouche.
Customarily a single administrative unit, they were leased to Bray in June
1488 for life at 100 marks p.a. The timing is significant. The grant
confirms Bray’s influence and authority at a time when Henry VII was
reviewing his moral debts and allegiances, and withdrawing or extending
still generous grants of grace in the considered light of judgement and
kingly experience. Bray may never have paid the 100 mark farm. In April
1488 he was said to have taken the issues since 1485; the (very defective)
receipt rolls record no payments by him; and in 1490 the lease was
exchanged for a grant in tail male, at an annual rent of a pair of spurs. This
grant included the issues from 21 August 1485. In June 1492, perhaps in
view of the French expedition and Bray’s childlessness, the grant in tail
was amended to Bray, his heirs and assigns, in fee simple.*®
Bray’s acquisition of Eaton demonstrates, perhaps more clearly than any
other transaction, the profits, tangible and intangible, to be gained from
royal office. The 1486 grant that gave Bray the most senior offices within
the Eaton condominium was part of a general distribution of patronage
after Bosworth, but it also came only two days after the King warranted a
pardon for Lord Zouche (former lord of Eaton) and on the same day that
letters were signed and sealed for the transfer of the treasurership to Lord
Dynham. Similarly the 1488 lease followed within a month of the
commission to Bray and others to let crown lands to farm. It was a
144 PROFIT, PIETY AND THE PROFESSIONS
commercial lease based on the full rate of the extent, although only about
two-thirds of the true value of the lands, but the rent may never have been
exacted and Bray was well placed to secure subsequent grants on ever more
favourable terms. Thus far is not extraordinary, and the inferences drawn
are based at best on circumstantial evidence. Then follows the agreement
of 23 November 1495 between Bray and Zouche. For £1,000 — a purchase
price after the rate of fifteen years according to the extent, but in practice
little more than Bray’s probable receipts of the preceding decade — Lord
Zouche, now finally restored in blood and with qualified expectations for
the full restoration of his inheritance including Eaton, confirmed Bray’s
tenure. He conveyed’to Bray full title to the Eaton complex ‘for asmoche
as the seid John Zouche knyght hath by the especiall labour, assistens and
meanes of the seid Sir Reignold atteyned the singuler favour and the
especiall grace of our . . . Soverayne lord. . . [and has been] restorid to
his estate, dignite and preeminence . . . ’, with restoration also, under
conditions, of his lands. As a naked expression of Bray’s influence, of the
intangible profits of office and power, he could hardly have been more
explicit.*
Thereafter Eaton stood testimony to conspicuous wealth. Bray built so
lavishly there that the receivership of John Cutte (receiver-general of the
duchy and, from 1505, under-treasurer of the Exchequer) was continually
and substantially overspent. By 1501 Reynold had spent more than £1,800
on the works at Eaton and had large stocks of building material there at his
death. He was aided by a gift of stone, at the cost of carriage, from the
‘rector of Assherugg’ (his old friend Christopher Urswick, dean of
Windsor, to whose chapel Bray himself contributed so largely). The stone
was probably for dressings, for the accounts suggest that the substance of
the house was brick. Eaton might have compared well with Lord
Cromwell’s Tattershall or with Hanwell, built by William Cope, Henry
VII’s cofferer, Margaret Beaufort’s servant, and Bray’s life-long colleague,
servant and friend. *8
Eaton was the most significant land grant from Henry VII to Bray and it
is entirely fitting that the parish is now distinguished by the ‘feudal
addition’ of Bray.*9 Later grants from the King fit either into the logic of
expansion of his estates, significant only against the background of the
reduced liberality of Henry VII’s later years, or depend on the identity of
interest of King and councillor and on Bray’s major office of chancellor of
the duchy. Steane and Hinton in Northamptonshire, in royal hands by
the death without heirs in 1489 of Lord Morley, and Ilmington, in
Warwickshire, forfeited by Sir Simon Mountford, were granted to Bray in
1495-6. Next year Bray bought out Anthony Fetiplace’s substantial
annuity in Steane and Hinton and thus realized the full value of lands
extended at over £50 p.a. While Ilmington was granted at Bray’s petition,
Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office 145
even this, by the addition over an erasure of assigns as well as heirs as a
contingent remainder, indicates the symbiotic relationship between King
and minister. The altered petition was not rewritten, but in a clerical
intervention that was by this date unusual, Henry VII has written ‘We
allow the rasyng that is in this bill’.°° By 1500 Bray was farming Pipehall
in Erdington, complementing his own purchase of the other Erdington
manor. Both have their origin in the murky dealings of Henry VII with the
Countess of Warwick: but the grant of the farm can have come only from
the crown.*!
Grants of office continued throughout the 1490s, although the pattem
changes. Many administrative tasks and local commissions carried no
reward and embodied merely what was expected of a senior councillor. But
local office did enhance his patronage, his status and the authority of the
King. Thus Bray was regularly appointed to the bench in nine counties,
though he sat habitually only in Middlesex and Surrey; the ninth county,
Derby, reflects his standing within the Stanley household rather than his
landholding, for he held no land in Derbyshire. His name was included in
twenty-three of the thirty-one commissions issued in 1493, the major
omissions being the marches {dominated by the prince’s council) and the
counties of the south-west.°* Of his land offices, some, such as the
stewardships of Grantham, Stamford, Ascot, Deddington and Kenilworth,
the parkership of Potterspury, and the forestership of Salcey, were almost
certainly granted at Bray’s instance, in his own particular interests or that
of a friend or protegé with whom he shared the office and the fees.*?
Others, more prestigious, were direct placements by the crown, asserting
its authority through powers delegated to Bray. Clearly Bray could not
exercise all these offices in person, nor could Henry long spare him from
his chamber and council. The chancellorship of the duchy also called for
frequent attendance in the duchy chamber at Westminster. ** Some offices
were soon regranted; in others Bray continued to devolve authority further
through his use of deputies, while retaining the right to intervene if
necessary and unimpaired powers of patronage.”°
We cannot estimate the value of such offices to Bray. Custody of
Carisbrooke was of some military significance, but the farm of the King’s
lands within the Isle of Wight officially brought Bray little above the
improvements he made, for his was at the whole rate of a realistic extent.
However, an inquiry in 1504 into the extortions of his deputy and his
successor demonstrates the scope for illegitimate enrichment. Although
Bray’s patent dates only from 1495, by the King’s ‘speciall commaun-
dement’ he had enjoyed office and revenues since 1488, paying the farm
directly to the King in his chamber.** In Sutton and Potton Bray received
146 PROFIT, PIETY AND THE PROFESSIONS
the whole of his small fee of four marks; whereas in the duchy honours of
Tutbury and Bolingbroke his deputies divided the whole of his wages
between themselves. °’ But profit cannot be measured by fees alone. Quite
apart from the hidden douceurs that oiled the wheels of society in general,
patronage equalled power, and in major offices Bray’s own interests were
inseparably identified with those of the King, without diminution of his
own authority. In general deficiencies in the evidence render it impossible
to evaluate precisely the benefit to either Reynold or his royal master. A
single instance must serve to illuminate the whole. An anguished letter to
Bray from Lancelot Lowther, concerning the balance of authority within
the lordships of Bromfield and Yale, and the importance of maintaining
tight control over appointments to offices there, well illustrates the
unquantifiable benefits which could be derived by master and servant
alike.°® But office could initiate profit even at the most humble level. For
example, John Etton, receiver of Bolingbroke, where Bray was steward,
made Bray the supervisor of his will, with five marks ‘for his labour’.*?
Moreover, where the King led, others followed, including the canons of
Windsor and of Wells, the Countess of Warwick, the executors of William
Trussell, or the University of Oxford, which, in 1494, appointed Bray
steward for life.©° Annuities and fees were but another expression of the
same relationship, honouring the grantee as much as the donor, and
bidding for a patronage which ultimately depended on Bray’s major offices
and standing with the King.°! Interlinked, but more unpredictable, and at
times based on a purely private and personal relationship, were his
appointments as overseer or supervisor of wills. Requests to act, such as
those made by the London merchants Thomas Windeout and Richard
Hill, recall old friendships; Viscount Lisle spoke of Bray with warmth, but
also asked for his mediation with the King; such a request, in Lisle’s case,
or the testamentary appointments of Bray made by Edward Story, Bishop
of Chichester, or Thomas Langton, Bishop of Winchester, may well be an
extension beyond the grave of the system of retaining by fee in the
interests of the grantor. Whatever the origin of such requests, they
provided Bray with a steady, if fluctuating, income of both specie and
plate.© Spiritual profit enhanced Bray’s earthly glories. He was, for
example, granted confraternity with the monks of Durham, Canterbury
and Westminster, and with the chapter of Lincoln: in the latter case, as a
specific ‘recompense’ for his ‘blessed and charitabil disposicion’ in a decree
made before him in the duchy chamber. Bray shared with Henry VII the
benefit of prayers at St Martin in the Fields. After his death he was
remembered in perpetual prayer by the wills of both Nicholas Compton
and John Cutte, whom he had materially assisted in the advancement of
their careers. Office as profit to the soul is most strikingly expressed in the
Magnificat window at Great Malvern and in Bray’s own chantry chapel at
Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office 147
Windsor, but almost his first act as lord of Eaton was to establish a chantry
there, and in Bath he cooperated in similar vein with Oliver King
(formerly the King’s secretary), where the wealth of both and their
association with Henry VII gave them access to the finest materials and
workmanship and the necessary royal licence.™
Politically his most important casual grant, which Bray can only have
accepted with the tacit approval of Henry VII himself, was his pension from
the French King after 1492. Bray was treasurer of war and a signatory to the
petition advising the King to make peace, but his pension originates in his
most ill-defined capacity, that of councillor to the King. The oft-recited
words of the Milanese ambassador of 1497 express this relationship better
than any modern pen may do: ‘The French . . . [with Henry VII’s]
knowledge and consent. . . give provision to the leading men of the realm,
to wit, the Lord Chamberlain, Master Braiset, Master Lovel, and as these
leading satraps are very rich the provision has to be very large’.
The French pension and wages of particular appointments were cer-
tainly profits of office. But no less intimately connected were the private
investments for which office provided the means and, on occasion, the
opportunity.
Senior office holders were well placed to bid for casualties in the King’s
gift, or for those grants of grace that ran ‘of course’ in return for the
payment of a fee. Bray’s two most substantial wardships belong to the early
years of the reign. His patent for that of Robert Wintershill has its roots in
the household of Margaret Beaufort, and the lands were administered with
Bray's manor of Shere.®° The wardship of John Writell was shared with
the goldsmiths Edmund and John Shaw.® Bray’s share of the substantial
cost and profit is alike unknown, although John Shaw, whose ties to Bray
were extremely close, was to marry his daughter Audrey to the ward. Bray
himself came to oversee the finding and sale of the King’s wards, and was
in a privileged position to bid for himself and his friends. His rela-
tionships with merchants encouraged investment in the shipment of wool
and even shipowning. His terms as under-treasurer and treasurer rein-
forced a commercial dialogue pre-dating 1485. Periodically Bray obtained
licences for substantial shipments of wool, and bottom in the King’s own
great ship, the Sovereign; although fragmentary evidence only of his
activities now survives.°
But it is in relation to the active land market that the methodology
adopted here has a wider application, even if here coloured by the
opportunities offered to Bray. Without any major corpus of private
material, the main source of information is that open to any student of late
medieval land ownership: the records of the central courts at Westminster.
148 PROFIT, PIETY AND THE PROFESSIONS
These are the De Banco rolls, the Feet of Fines, and the close rolls of
Chancery, which had become primarily a register for the enrolment of
private deeds. ’° Equity proceedings and ‘ancient deeds’, speculatively
searched, produce useful sidelights. Some ground work is necessary. First,
caveats must be applied to the adversarial language of the records. Land
was conveyed by means of legal fictions: writs of right precipe in capite until
about 1487-8; thereafter, for reasons still awaiting investigation, the writ
almost universally used was disseisin in le post. Both led, by leave of the
court, to a legal settlement embodied in the foot of fine. Variations from
these formulae tend to indicate a genuine, rather than a collusive, suit.
Second, the process is commonly obfuscated by enfeoffments to use.’! To
make progress in interpreting the records, one must first identify the
feoffees commonly used by the beneficiary from charter evidence or by
observing the repetition of particular groupings of names in the legal
records. This is most involved in Shere, where the feoffees sued against
Bray himself (as the tenant in possession) and in Barnsbury, where
Reynold had seisin as a feoffee of Lord Berners. In the Shere case Bray
called Ormond (the true vendor) to warranty, thus effecting the actual
transfer of title; in Barnsbury the conveyance was further complicated by a
suit for detinue of deeds against Thomas Bourgchier. Both times the
common law fictions are clarified by charter evidence.’? For the bio-
grapher of Bray the preliminary identification of feoffees is particularly
complex. His earliest feoffees spring from his service to Margaret Beaufort
before 1485 and continue sole until about 1488, when their numbers
expand and the names change.’* Yet, even though there are only two
main groups of feoffees, divided in point of time, their company was not
entirely constant and there are unusual features. Contrary to normal
usage, the cestui que use was seldom given as Bray but instead as William
Smith, successively clerk, Bishop of Lichfield, and, from 1495, Bishop of
Lincoln. This would not matter if all fines allegedly to the use of Smith
were ipso facto to the use of Bray: but such is not the case. Smith, like
Bray, moved from the service of Margaret Beaufort to Henry VII’s,
maintaining his dual allegiance all his life, and even the expanded group
of feoffees have a common background in Margaret’s service. These
variables make it difficult, at times, to distinguish when the feoffees were
acting for Bray from those to the use of some other party. Fines involving
John Shaw, and Margaret herself, are particular instances of a wider
problem. We may wonder whether civil power combined with at times
civic wealth, but speculation leaves the conundrum unresolved.
Contemporaries as well as historians were confused. Thus Remenham
was included in the 1511 division of Bray’s estates even though the books
of Henry VII's treasurer of the chamber suggests that it was a royal
purchase intended as an endowment to Westminster Abbey. This is
Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office 149
supported by the names of the feoffees and by arrangements made by a
recognizance designed to secure the transfer of title.’* The conveyance of
Wandsworth in 1502, although not to Bray’s usual feoffees, was speci-
fically said to be to his use. The circumstances suggest a political context
or a mortgage, and the title to the manor was subsequently disputed
between the Abbot of Westminster and William, Lord Sandys, one of
Bray's lineal heirs.’? Edmund Bray claimed Drayton in Middlesex,
alienated by Reynold to Margaret Beaufort,’© and by 1501 she held
Boxworth (Cambs.), acquired in 1496 by Bray’s usual feoffees afforced
only by the attorney Gregory Skipwith, who also acted for Bray at
Battlesden the same year.’” The evidence for the conveyance in 1494 of
Irchester (Northants. ) suggests that Bray was to be the beneficiary, but by
1511 William Cope and his wife had seisin. Although the deed of sale
signed in May 1490 by Lord Dudley for Shepperton (Middx) identifies
Bray as purchaser, the fine was to an augmented group of Bray’s feoffees,
and the true use and immediate descent is uncertain. By 1505 the manor
was held by the goldsmith Bartholomew Reed. ’®
The real problem in listing the lands accumulated by Bray, or by
anybody whose estate came by purchase rather than inheritance, is that
there are no cross-checks to serve as a controlment to the legal record. An
incomplete list appears in the 1510 settlement that divided the inheri-
tance between William Sandys and Edmund Bray consequent to litigation
in the council chamber.” It ignores some (but not all) lands acquired
before 1497, perhaps partly assigned by the terms of a will of 1497, which
is now lost, as is the will made (according to Edmund Bray) in 1500.8°
Small properties may escape mention altogether. We know of a tenement
in Princes Risborough only because a bill of repairs survives in Bray’s
correspondence: the evidence obtains circumstantial confirmation from
the later distraint of Edmund Bray for suit of court.8! Land in Suffolk is
known of primarily because Bray sued in Chancery for seisin; still obscure,
they are identified more closely in 1510. Again, from circumstantial
evidence, we may guess that Bray’s intercession for a mortmain licence
formed part of the purchase price.®? Parcels of lands added to individual
manors might be too small to merit legal proceedings in the Westminster
courts. Such purchases are recorded in the manorial accounts for Shere,
1485-93, and in the declared accounts for Eaton 1496-1500, but are
otherwise entirely lost.°?
Such heavy dependence on the formal record obscures mens’ motives
for entering the property market. Land was the most cherished and most
visible status symbol in fifteenth-century society, and the land market was
hedged about with legal restrictions, particularly in relation to inherited
lands, yet it flourished in despite. When the sources are restricted,
attempts to identify the reasons behind a particular sale rely upon
150 PROFIT, PIETY AND THE PROFESSIONS
circumstantial evidence open to a diversity of interpretation. Inevitably
the result is compromise. Reynold Bray, with his long experience of the
difficulties of conciliar arbitration, would have recognized the historian’s
dilemma and been the first to acknowledge that judgements based on
compromise and subjective interpretation remain open to question and of
doubtful longevity. But that bleak assessment need not invalidate the
enterprise.
It would be tedious to provide a detailed inventory of Bray’s entre-
preneurial efforts. Even an abbreviated catalogue presents an awesome
level of activity, suggests patterns within the expansion of the estates, and
reveals quirks in the evidence. If we leave aside those investments already
considered, whether by purchase or crown grant, Bray’s speculations in the
market in land fall into two main periods. The first, to 1495, is politically
inspired. Office provided wealth, opportunity, influence and the subtle
leverage to mobilize the due processes of the civil law. That element did
not disappear after 1495, but there are more signs of market forces at work,
and an activity that was sometimes hectic. No less than nine manors were
purchased in 1499, for example, and the same number in 1502, though
some were small and insignificant. And in some cases Bray trimmed his
sails close, whether in genuine ignorance or in a full knowledge discounted
in the arrogance of power, to the limits of legality, driving bargains for an
unquiet title that in two cases at least remained to trouble or disinherit his
heirs. The end product was an estate, almost all of it acquired by patent or
purchase rather than inheritance, stretching along a belt fifteen miles
either side of the present M1, from Cottesbrooke (Northants.) in the
north through Pavenham and Bedford (Beds.), to Eaton, Ledbum and
Mentmore (Beds. and Bucks.) in the south; thence along the Chilterns
and the Icknield way, taking Great Milton (Oxon.) as its most westerly
point until the line curved in to a group circling (can it be accident?) the
queen’s manor of Bray (Berks.) and found its epicentre in Windsor, the
focus of Bray’s last years. Estates were scattered as far west as Somerset;
north to Erdington near Birmingham (Warw.); and into East Anglia in
the east. There was a large, less coherent, agglomeration in Sussex and the
counties of the south, houses in London, and the Surrey lands based on
Shere, greatly expanded by the next generation.
Two names stand out from the first period of Bray's purchases. William
Berkeley, Earl of Nottingham, Earl Marshal and, from 1489, Marquis of
Berkeley, agreed sales and exchanges of land with Bray associated with,
and dependent upon, his arrangements he made with Henry VII; nor,
indeed, was Bray the only councillor to help pluck this self-proferred
sacrificial chicken. Thomas Stillington, ‘cousin’ and heir of the disgraced
Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office 151
Bishop of Bath, may have had little option but to concur in his own
disherison.** Both series of transactions point up the difficulties of
dependence on plea roll evidence. We do not know the price or, for
certain, the reasons for Nottingham’s conveyance to Bray of the
Bedfordshire manor of Bromham in mid-1488. Plea rolls are concemed
only with the due rendering of proper legal forms, not with the human
negotiations concealed by the language of the law. The indenture setting
out the terms by which Stotfold and the barony of Bedford were
transferred to Bray is enrolled among the charters at the rear of the De
Banco roll, where the membranes are most vulnerable to damage. It is a
fascinating and exceptionally detailed document. But water or the delicate
palates of some eighteenth-century rodents have nosed out some of the
most essential phrases, expunging them from the record and thus from the
memory of man.°’? The parties to whom Thomas Stillington in 1491
conveyed Great Stambridge in Essex include the attorney John Berdefeld
and the merchant Henry Colet in addition to Bray’s usual feoffees. The
true descent was to elude identification by more than one puzzled jury as
well as the moder historian. The manor fitted ill within any geographical
logic in Bray’s estates. By 1504 it was in the possession of the London
goldsmith, John Shaw, a feoffee and executor of Bray. The inquisition post
mortem on Shaw records Bray as the vendor.®°
When we find that the deeds for the sale of lands in Kensington and for
the manor of Haynes (Beds. ) were acknowledged by Berkeley in Chancery
on the same day as other deeds by which Henry VII allowed him to secure
property for the performance of his will, we need hardly doubt that the
events were connected, particularly as the King licenced the alienation to
Bray. Two terms later Bromham was added and in 1489 Mawneys (Essex),
which was almost immediately exchanged, with the payment of a
differential of 400 marks, for the manor of Stotfold and the more
prestigious barony of Bedford: all the lands and the castle, that is, but not
the title of baron nor the advowsons of abbeys, priories and nunneries
thereunto appertaining.®’ Haynes and Bedford came encumbered with
fees; but in Haynes Bray bought off part of his obligation, while the
annuities charged on Bedford were unlikely to deter his continued
interest. They were to the lawyer, John Mordaunt, a member of Bray’s
own estate council and his successor as chancellor of the duchy; to the
king’s solicitor, Andrew Dymmock, and the king’s attomey, James
Hobart; and to the rising lawyer and king’s serjeant, John Fisher.° Not
surprisingly in 1492 Bray sought and secured confirmation of his title from
Berkeley’s right heirs, Thomas, Earl of Surrey, now slowly working himself
back to favour, and Maurice Berkeley, who was to suffer severely by his
disinheritance. Indeed, in 1499 Maurice Berkeley, the marquis’s brother,
resold Mawneys to Bray at a time when he and Surrey sought from Henry
152 PROFIT, PIETY AND THE PROFESSIONS
livery of the Cokesay inheritance; and in July 1502 Berkeley was
sufficiently desperate, or perhaps merely sufficiently perspicacious, to
confirm Edmund Dudley in the reversion of the manor of Findon
(purchased by Dudley from Richard Guildford, who had obtained it from
the marquis) in return for a promise ‘to be of his councell in all such causes
and materes as the seid lord shall have a doo consemyng the lemyng of the
seid Edmund without fee or reward to be had. . . but only at the plesour of
the seid lord’.®?
In Stillington’s case it is perhaps not too fanciful to see Reynold Bray,
Richard Fox and Robert Sherbome as the fiscal gaolers of his errant
kinsman. They were identified as administrators of the bishop’s possessions
by juries responding to writs issued for multure and Bray’s eventual
discharge by the Exchequer does not prove this to be untrue.° Within a
month of the bishop’s death, 15 May 1491, Thomas had sold Bray the
manors of Great Stambridge (Essex) and Marylebone (Middx. ) at approxi-
mately two-thirds of the market value. Stambridge was subsequently
alienated, but in 1496 Marylebone was leased to Thomas Hobson, Lady
Margaret's auditor, for 20 marks p.a., and sold to him in 1499.7! In 1492
Stillington sold Bray yet other lands, in Paddington and elsewhere in
Middlesex, at a still more favourable rate. It may have been an arbitration
award by Chief Justice Hussey and others that prompted Stillington and
another claimant Robert Cotton to make over their title to Bray, who
alienated the lands to Margaret Beaufort as part of her intended endow-
ment to the King’s chantry at Westminster. The degree of compulsion
emerges in 1493, when Bray pursued Stillington to the point of outlawry
on a debt of 515 marks.”
After 1494 the simple correlation between office, profit and wealth and
opportunity, investment and land breaks down. Bray’s income now came
from many sources other than office. Estate expansion acquired its own
momentum, as he bought or sold lands, or added small parcels to manors
retained in hand. He bought where he could, from those in debt or
without heirs, as well as the politically indigent. Bray’s own focus shifted
towards Windsor: he clearly welcomed the chance to buy and consolidate
the fractured manor of Clewer (within the modem boundary of the town)
in a series of conveyances that may have been in the interests of all the
parties concemed.”*
Bray’s acquisitions read like a sonorous roll call of the English
countryside. Most were ‘made sure’ by concords reached in the court of
common pleas. By 1499 Reynold Bray stood at the height of his powers.
He remained exceptionally close to the King, particularly as a president of
the nascent council leamed in the law, an intimate and increasingly
Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office 153
influential manifestation of the King’s council. The political element
remained and indeed the council leamed gave Bray a further power base
for his own enrichment, available for use without derogation to the
interests of the King.”*
In 1494 Bray purchased from the childless Henry Lord Grey of Codnor
the Northamptonshire manors of Newbottle and Charlton, in a complex
series of conveyances intended to secure his title without further interrup-
tion.”> Drayton (Middx) required concords with various parties over three
years to secure Bray’s title; and the conveyance of Irchester (Northants)
was probably to Bray’s immediate use.” In 1495 Bray assured his title to
Eaton; obtained from Robert Wright,the manor of Erdington (Warw.),
and, from the King, Steane and Hinton; although the preservation at
Westminster of an account for Erdington 1492-3 with liveries to an
unnamed lord may indicate an earlier transfer of title.®” In 1496, besides
Ilmington, he bought lands in Medmenham (Bucks. ) and the small manor
of Knyll in Tarring (Sussex); secured from the senior branch of the Hussey
family recognition of his title to Standen Hussey and lands in Harting; and
exchanged lands with Thomas Oxenbridge, thereby acquiring Battlesden
(Beds.), a useful staging post between the Eaton manors ard those lands
centred on the town of Bedford. The exchange appears to revise an
indenture of the previous year and may thus be connected with the heavy
recognizance for allegiance in which Oxenbridge was bound in 1495. It
hints at continuing legal difficulties over parcels of the Hussey inheri-
tance. Later additions to Battlesden enable us to see Bray’s own estate
council at work and to see how his privileged position enabled him to
employ duchy officers in his own private service.”°
In 1498 he bought Cottesbrooke manor (Northants.) and lands in
Bedfordshire from John Markham, taking collateral security on two
Lincolnshire manors; at the same time Markham was also selling land to
Lord Daubeney, and Humphrey Banaster. Is this the same Markham who,
little more than a year later, was indicted for murder in the King’s books,
‘which is of greate substans as Sir R. Bray can tell’??? As lord of
Cottesbrooke, Bray became founder of Pipewell Abbey and he sought from
King Henry the franchises of free warren and frankpledge within the
manor.!° 1499 was his annus mirabilis. His most important purchase was
a valuable group of lands centred on Windsor, which brought him the
manors of Clewer, Brocas, Buntingbury, Dedworth Maunsell and Foxley
rated, in 1546, at over £85 p.a. The purchase was exceptionally complex.
In November 1499 Bray brought from the childless William Brocas the
manors and lands of which Brocas was the caput and gained immediate
possession by buying out the life tenants. Clewer and Foxley were a tangle
of legal rights, complicated by the involvement of Charles Rippon, a
household man whose political future was now uncertain. The taint of
154 PROFIT, PIETY AND THE PROFESSIONS
treason and a riot involving him and John Preston (vendor of Remenham)
suggests he was not a willing partner. His interests were protected in the
short term and Rippon was allowed a lease in the small manor of Foxley,
an inducement to sell used by Bray on at least one other occasion. Suits
against William Skulle and John Rykes can be explained as buying out
co-parcenors, although Rykes, like Rippon, was involved in the miasma of
treason around Edmund de la Pole, for which both were indicted in 1502
and for which Rippon suffered the ultimate penalty. For the aged and
childless Thomas Danvers sale of his rights may have been a part of the
pre-testamentary division of his estates. ©! Deeper undercurrents run also
beneath the re-purchase of Mawneys. !©
Edgcote (Northants.)’ is superficially uncontroversial, although the
names John and James Clarell suggest a link with Margaret Beaufort and of
Thomas Hasilwood with Richard Empson. Combined with the alleged
earlier exclusion of a rightful heir, it may be that Bray bought out a
disputed title as part of a generally acceptable settlement. In May 1498
Henry VII himself advanced Bray money for building works there.'© This
payment and Henry VII’s visit of 16 September 1498 point up a problem
that we meet writ large with both Great Milton (Oxon.) and Broadwater
(Sussex). In all three the formal legal process post-dates Bray’s occupation.
Great Milton and Broadwater were purchased from Sir William Radmyld,
who retained a life interest by a prior agreement in 1497 with John Shaw,
to whom the manors were to revert. Yet even the final concord of 1503
fails to give unambiguous evidence that Great Milton belonged to Bray
and a deed acknowledged in 1499 in king’s bench by Radmyld’s widow
(daughter of Elizabeth Duchess of Norfolk) suggests a joint use, whereas a
court roll shows Bray’s tenure dating from at least April 1499 and the
rental was renewed at his first court. Broadwater, where he first bought
land in 1496, followed a similar descent, but may not have come to Bray
until late 1501 or early 1502.'°* Hinton Pipard (Wilts. and Berks.)
reasserts the Windsor connection. It cost Bray four days meat and drink to
the vendor and the mayor of Windsor besides the purchase price.!© The
conveyance of Great Rissington (Glos. ) and the purchase of the advowson
of St Leonard’s Hospital in Bedford (to which Bray immediately presented
Hugh Oldham) complete a frenetic year. !6
In 1500 Bray acquired a manor in Weston Turville (Bucks.), part of the
Cokesay inheritance; another part, Coldicote in Gloucestershire, was
simultaneously purchased from the same parties by Richard Empson. !°
Westhay (Beds.) came, like Bedford Hospital, ultimately from the
impecunious Thomas Bassingbourn. In Husborne Crawley we again
encounter an uncertain use. A feoffment of 1499 was said to be to the use
of Humphrey Coningsby, a senior lawyer who was a Bray feoffee; yet
charters of 1500 and 1501 specifically name Bray and it was certainly he
Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office 155
whom the Exchequer sued for distraint of homage. The manor was
assigned in 1510 to Edmund Bray. '°8
Two purchases show more clearly the darker side of office-holding. Late
in 1500 Bray purchased the Somerset manor of Eastham. But after his
death one of his feoffees, William Cope, King’s cofferer, claimed it,
alleging that Bray had bought only an annuity and that he, Cope, had
purchased the manor itself from John Hayes, when Hayes, suspected of
treason, was in his custody and for whom he had sued to the King for
pardon. Eastham, by this account, fell to Cope as part payment of the 500
marks required by the King to buy his grace. Although Hayes’s title may
itself have been doubtful, there are other parallels to Cope’s story, and the
inquisition post mortem returned after Cope’s death agrees with his version
of events. The wrangle over title survived both Cope and Bray, and was
unresolved more than thirty years into the sixteenth century.!© Even
more explicit is the background to Bray’s acquisition in 1502 of the small
manor of East Haddon in Northamptonshire by processes which reflect
credit on none of the parties concerned. When Edmund Bray was sued for
it in the court of requests, the father of the original vendor alleged the
false augmentation of the terms of the deed of sale and that the style of
manor was ‘colorably’ put into the fine. The depositions further charge
that Reynold obtained the manor only by virtue of ‘hys myte, power and
grette extorte’. The council found against Edmund Bray in 1521.!!°
In 1501-2 minor parcels of land were added to the house of Bray’s birth.
Bray never lost interest in his Worcestershire lands, infinitesimally small
in value though they were. His sister Lucy had oversight of the lands and
literary evidence shows how far his might eased his purchase and deterred
possible rivals.!1!
His last two years show no let up in his expansionist mood. New
acquisitions include the eponymous manor of Bernersbury (Barnsbury,
Middx.) acquired from Lord Berners, a Stafford client, and Kempston
Daubeney, acquired in a tripartite exchange shortly after the return of a
commission of concealments relating to the manor.!!? Boveney and
Dorney (Bucks.) and Cruchfield (Berks.) were acquired from John Wayte,
a surety with Charles Rippon in 1498 for further conveyance of Remen-
ham.!!? If the evidence of stained glass no longer extant be allowed,
Burnham and West Town (Bucks.) were more than a passing fancy, and in
Pavenham he bought out both the reversioner and the tenant in
possession.'!* Thirteen other conveyances transferred title to Bray for
lands in five counties, in addition to the indenture concerning
Wandsworth and a process involving Thomas Lucy, of which the details
are now lost.!!*° Again, we may speculate, was the purchase of Charlton in
156 PROFIT, PIETY AND THE PROFESSIONS
Hopgras dependent on the purchase by the vendor, John Isbury, of a
licence for alienation in mortmain from Henry VII?
The most important acquisition cannot be dated with precision.
Broadwater and its attendant manors may have yielded £90 p.a. It came,
like Great Milton, from William Radmyld. Albourne, Beverington and
Lancing were exchanged, with other lands, for Kempston Daubeney. In
Broadwater itself we have a glimpse of Bray as parochial seigneur, giving
rabbits for the patronal feast of the parish church, engaging in remedial
building works, looking for the best tenants; and, most interestingly,
though we cannot be certain whether Bray or Shaw was the moving spirit,
searching in public and private records for evidence of ancient rights. !!° It
may also instance a rare clash of interests with Henry VII. Rather than
alienate his own estates to Westminster, Henry assigned over £30,000 to
buy land. Bray’s exchange with Bergavenny was certainly a hollow sham,
for Bergavenny was required to assign his share to Westminster. Only two
weeks before his death, Bray and his feoffees obtained a mortmain licence
including Broadwater and, more obviously, Remenham: yet his will
specifically devised the Radmyld lands to his nephews, rather than to the
corporate good of the Tudor soul.!!”
In this hurricane of activity, much of it in the last four years of Bray’s
life, it is understandably difficult to draw up a definitive list of his estates.
Both the manner and the rapidity of their accumulation left tensions
unresolved at his death. Although lacking heirs of his own body, he
clearly felt a strong sense of dynasty. Not only did he will the bulk of his
estates to the sons of his brother John, but he also provided for their
marriages. The eldest, Edmund, may have married in Bray’s lifetime
according to the terms of an agreement made in 1497 with Sir John
Norbury. Edmund was to take the lion’s share (or so Bray intended) of the
purchased lands. More interestingly, Edmund’s younger brothers were to
marry the heirs general of his wife: the daughters and heirs of Katherine’s
sister Constance and her husband Henry Lovell. They were given a
remainder right in the purchased lands, but were to take all the Hussey
inheritance, plus the valuable manors of Chelsea and Broadwater, with
remainder each to each ‘as long as any of the same heirs males of my name
and bloode shall endure’. To this end Reynold purchased from Henry VII
the far from valuable wardship of Agnes and Elizabeth Lovell. But
although Bray paid Henry at least £140 as the whole, or the final portion,
of the purchase price, and the warrant was duly signed by the King and
delivered into the Chancery, death intervened before the fees of the
hanaper were paid, or the patent enrolled.!!8
Death broke the bonds of office and obligation and Henry VII proved
ruthless in the aftermath. He resumed the wardship, selling it to Edmund
Dudley on the excuse that Bray’s grant had been found ‘insufficient and
Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office 157
voide in the lawe’ and then recommended disingenuously to Dudley that
he should resell the wardship to Bray’s executors ‘to thentent that the said
mynde and last will of the said Sir Reynold may be performed and take
effect aftre his said entent’. Although Bray’s feoffees indeed repurchased
the wardship, transferring to Dudley the manors of Newbottle and
Charlton at a loss to fund the 1,000 marks purchase price, Bray’s mind was
never fully performed. By 1509 Agnes was married to John, son of Richard
Empson, one of the feoffees, and Elizabeth to Anthony, son of Andrew
Windsor, Dudley’s first brother-in-law. !!? William Sandys may have taken
advantage of the minority of John Bray’s sons to press for a share of
Reynold’s estate rather than the reversionary interest allowed him by the
will. Edmund lost part of his portion to Sandys, but, in 1510, divided with
him those lands destined for his brothers. '2° The King himself, in
Dudley’s words, so managed matters that ‘the executors of Mr Bray were
hardlie dealt with at dyvers tymes’.!?! They not only lost the wardship, but
were fined £800 for alleged commercial misdealing by Bray and paid an
even larger fine, of 5,000 marks, for a general pardon. !??
Reynold’s death at a time of royal celebration leaves no immediate trace
in the records. But although the bond of office was now broken, and
Henry VII in his turn creamed off the profits, the King did not quite forget
his deeper obligation. It is there in general terms in his will, when he
acknowledged his gratitude to all those who had made him King. More
profoundly and more personally and after any direct obligation had ceased,
he expressed it in 1507 in a payment for a trental of masses for Katherine
Bray’s soul. !?3
Just how rich was Reynold Bray, and how much profit did he derive
from office? The question is not one which can be satisfactorily answered,
primarily for the reasons outlined in the introduction to this paper. We
cannot even place a value on the wages of office. Fees for major offices are
generally specified in the patent, but for lesser grants the patent often
refers only to the accustomed wages. We are thus dependent on the
uncertain survival of detailed evidence, complicated in the case of Bray by
the numerous occasions on which the patent incorporated a joint grant.
We cannot hope to quantify the hidden benefits, or trace the full extent of
the commonwealth of interest which lead others to follow Henry VII’s
example and retain Bray by office or by fee. The Great Chronicle offers a
revealing backhanded compliment in its epitaph of Bray:
which by his lyfe lyvid not withowth much haterede and many an
unkeynd and untrewe report of many of the kyngys subgectys . . . [but
he] ... dyd bettyr than he wold make countenaunce ffor, and
158 PROFIT, PIETY AND THE PROFESSIONS
therewith reffucid gyfftys of valu and took oonly mete or drynk, and
where he took, the gyver was suyr of a ffreend and a speciall solicytour of
theyr matyer. !24
Fear and detestation is no less a measure of influence. !?°
When we look at Bray’s lands we cannot apply a simple multiplier to their
purchase price (even where known) to derive an annual value. Dugdale,
who cites no evidence, asserts that the post-1497 purchases alone were
worth more than 1,000 marks a year; McFarlane, with typical
thoroughness, totalled more than £5,400 for bargains whose entry on the
close rolls (to 1500) made mention also of the purchase price.!*° Between
1485 and 1503 Bray spent over £10,000 on buying land. Over this, other
lands, acquired by inheritance, purchase or gift, were worth in excess of
£420 p.a. Of others again (although much the lesser part) we know neither
the value nor the purchase price. Nor can a multiplier be applied to
Katherine Bray’s dowerlands, for they were considerably less than a
one-third share. There may be good reason for this. Reynold and Katherine
had an equal interest in seeing the conditions of his will fulfilled. His
nephews were to be married to her nieces, and, in name at least, unite the
Hussey lands. Both took an interest in Jesus College, where Katherine’s
munificence outstripped his, and, in their prestigious building works at
Windsor. If Bray willed lands worth 40 marks for the maintenance of
perpetual alms in the chapel, Katherine matched this interest with equal
pragmatism, leaving goods ‘as nede shall requyre’ primarily to the repair of
the highway at Eton and ‘the ordynaunce of house of eseament’ for the
canons: a bequest founded, no doubt, on Bray’s assignment to her of half his
plate.!?” There are more precise pointers. Bray customarily paid the whole
purchase price of land within a very short period of the signing of indentures
for its sale. He offered the greatest contribution of any layman other than
Margaret Beaufort herself to the benevolence of 1491. Although Bray’s
£500 is nearly matched by £400 from Thomas Lovell (treasurer of the
chamber and chancellor of the Exchequer), and a similar amount from Lord
Treasurer Dynham, such offerings contrast with £68 paid at days by Lord
Willoughby de Broke, the king’s steward of household, or the £40 proffered
by Richard Empson, attorney of the duchy.!28 Besides Eaton, Bray was
building at Newbottle and Edgcote, and our evidence is woefully incom-
plete. His public benefactions, too, were munificent. He funded works on a
massive scale at Windsor, and seems to have shared in the costs of building
at Malvern, Bath and Jesus College, besides lesser works.'?? After Bray’s
death Henry VII demanded the enormous sum of 5,000 marks for a pardon.
What is immediately significant is that the executors called the King’s bluff,
and more than half this fine had been paid by February 1505. A further
1,200 marks obtained their discharge from prosecution for alleged customs
Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office 159
offences: Henry required collateral security of lands worth £290 p.a. for the
payment, but forgave them 400 marks of the principal. !2° Office, we may
reasonably conclude, brought Bray wealth as its most visible outward profit.
Despite this undoubted success story, we are, perhaps, left to wonder why
the rewards were not even greater. Bray had built up a landed estate easily
sufficient to support a title, yet remained a commoner. In 1501 he was
admitted into the exclusive ranks of the knights of the Garter, though we
may speculate on the pedigree of his election.!?! He kept estate in
London, and peers paid him court, but he did not join their ranks. The
answer may not lie simply in Henry’s parsimony with honour and the
Great Chronicle may offer us a clue. For all Henry VII’s chequered
upbringing and colourless reputation, he was sensitive to occasion and to
the nuances of the cursus of honour. Bray, we are told, was ‘playn and
rowth in spech’.!?? The inventory of his goods (although too defective to
be good evidence) gives no hint of cultured or chivalric interests, but he
was not untouched by learning. If a chantry priest was recommended to
him primarily for his ability to cast accounts, Bray patronized both
Pembroke and Jesus colleges; Hugh Oldham and William Smith were
among his friends; John Colet, son of his old friend Henry, was to be his
wife’s executor; and Thomas Linacre attended his deathbed. !3> There is a
similar ambiguity in his war record. Despite the large contingent he took
to France, his indenture deleted the duty of personal service, and Bray
travelled there in a primarily civilian capacity; he went to Exeter in 1497
as much a councillor as man of war; but the bloody battle of Blackheath
saw him win his banner and augmentation of his arms. 34 Treasurers of
England in general commanded a peerage, spiritual or lay, but Bray held
office for less than five months. It was he and the King who enhanced the
always prestigious chancellorship of the duchy. Bray’s younger and more
martial heirs met a youthful and more warlike King. William Sandys was
raised to the peerage in 1523; Edmund Bray, a younger man, in 1529. But
Henry VIII was yet his father’s son. When William Sandys expended his
wealth in the King’s service (and in speculation in ex-monastic property)
and died in debt to the crown, Henry VIII prised the Clewer complex,
inherited from Bray, from Thomas Lord Sandys in part settlement of the
debt.
But for Reynold Bray himself, the profits of office have their lasting
monument. He lies beneath his chantry at Windsor. Above him, his
badge of the hemp brake, carved in stone, and round about the heavy
symbolism of the monarchy and house of Beaufort, whom he had served so
well. Thus ossified and in sculpted form, Bray’s profits of office are
remembered into the twentieth century.!*°
160 PROFIT, PIETY AND THE PROFESSIONS
The Lands of Reynold Bray
COUNTY
Haynes Beds
Eaton Bray
Tottemhoe
Houghton Regis
Bromham
Bedford
Stotfold
Battlesden
Hinwick
Husbormne Crawley
Westhey (in Higham Gobion)
St Leonards, Bedford
(advowson)
Pavenham
Kempston Daubeney
North Standen
(Standen House) Berks
South Moreton
Brocas (in Clewer)
Buntingbury (in Winkfield)
Dedworth Maunsell
Clewer
Foxley (in Bray)
Cruchfield (in Bray)
Haywards (in Sonning)
Remenham
Buckhurst
Ledbum Bucks
Mentmore
Great Marlowe (land)
Medmenham
Weston Turville
Boveney
Domey
Bumham
West Town in Bumham
ACQUIRED BRAY/
SANDYS
1487
1488/90
1488/90
1488/90
1488
1490
1490
1496
1498
1499
1500
1499
1502-3
1503
1478
1488
1499
1499
1499
1499
1499
1502
1502
1503
1488/90
1488/90
1494
1496
1500
1502
1502
1502
1502
DWW BDWBWDWDWBWWDWITIOD
NNNNMNNnNMNMNWMNWAB
DWODWBWDWBIWITwD
SOLD
1564/80
1623
1566
1565
1569
1547
1556
1566
1566
by 1559
by 1594
1569
1533
@: 1556
1546
1546
1546
1546
1639
1577
1609
1612
1577-8
1563
1537
1529
1529
by 1529
1529
1529
Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office 161
Boxworth alias
Overhall
Great Stambridge
Mawneys (in Romford)
Great Rissington
Queen Hoo (in Tewin)
Chelsea
Kensington alias
Nottingbarons
Shepperton
Marylebone
Paddington, etc. (land)
West Drayton
Bamsbury
Tybum
Newbottle
Charlton
Irchester
Steane
Hinton
Edgcote
Cottesbrooke
East Haddon
Horley
Great Milton
Kidlington (land)
Eastham (in Crewkeme)
Flood
Freefolk
COUNTY ACQUIRED BRAY/ SOLD
SANDYS
Cambs
1496 — by 1501
Essex 1491 — by 1503
1489 — 1490
1499 B by 1523
Glos 1498 Ss. L571
Herts 1502 S 1536
Middx 1486 SS 1535
1488 B 1519
1490 — by 1503
1491 — 1499
1492 — 1501
1494-6 — 1501
1502 S 1540
1503 - 1503
Nhants 1494 — 1505
1494 -— 1505
1494 - by 1511
1495 S 1551
1495 S$ 1551
c. 1498 1535
1498 1549
1502 B. 15212
Oxon ? life tenancy
1499 B 1539
1497-99
Som 1500 B 1532
Suth 1483 S 1612
1488 — 1503
162 PROFIT, PIETY AND THE PROFESSIONS
COUNTY ACQUIRED BRAY/ SOLD
SANDYS
Carisbrooke and Isle of Wight 1488 life tenancy
St Mary’s, Bury (land) Suff 1497 B
Claygate Surrey 1486 life tenancy
Shere 1486/95 B -
Wandsworth 1502 S disputed
Harting Sussex c. 1478 B by 1520
‘Derndale’ 21478 — 1496
West Tarring 1496
Broadwater 1501/2 S 1605?
Albourne 1501/2 — 1503/4
Beverington 1501/2 — 1503/4
Lancing 1501/2 1503/4
Erdington Warw 1495 B 1530
Ilmington 1496 S 1550
Hinton Pipard Wilts 1499 S 1606
Hoperas (in Hungerford) Wilts (now
Berks) 1501 S 1606
St John in Bedwardine
(land) Worcs ? B 1501-2
Some small parcels of land have been omitted.
Notes
1. This article has incurred many debts: to the staffs of the archives cited, but particularly
to Christine Reynolds and the late Nicholas McMichael of the Westminster Abbey
Muniment Room; to those of the Public Record Office; to the late Prof. Charles Ross;
to Dr Carole Rawcliffe, Dr Rowena Archer and Dr Michael Hicks who read, criticized,
and supplied additional material for earlier versions. Without the unflagging encou-
tagement of Dr Hicks it would not have seen the light of day, and I owe him especial
thanks.
WAM 5472 ff.20v, 29, 31 et seq; WAM 12181 f.28v.
3. O. Barron, ‘The Brays of Shere’, The Ancestor, vi (1903), pp. 2-3; T. Habington,
Survey of Worcestershire, J}. Amphlett (ed.), (Worcs. Hist. Soc. 2 vols 1895-9), ii.
p. 130.
4. A.F. Pollard, The Reign of Henry VII from Contemporary Sources (3 vols, 1913-14), i. p.
153; The Anglica Historia of Polydore Vergil, D. Hay (ed.), (CS 3rd ser. 1950), p. 133.
N
16.
18.
19.
20.
2A
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office 163
W. Dugdale, The Baronage of England (2 vols 1676), ii. pp. 303-4, 311; GEC ii.
pp. 287-9; BL MS Add 32482 A 24 (brass of Jane Halliwell).
CFR 1485-1509, No. 755.
Below, pp. 156-7; for the later history of the title, see Barron, ‘Brays of Shere’, pp. 6,
8-9; GEC ii. p. 286.
WAM 5472, WAM 12181-12190, passim; WAM 5479°*; WAM 5472° f.2.
‘Brays of Shere’, pp. 2-3; Leland’s Itinerary in England and Wales, L. Toulmin-Smith
(ed.), (5 vols 1964), v. 229; given circumstantial support by WAM 5472 f.41v, WAM
16026, 16051; SC 6/Hen VII/1843. Bray’s father leased the manor of Laughern, within
the parish: information which I owe to Mr. G. Baugh.
WAM 5472 f.27; SC 6/Hen VII/1843; CP 25(1)/207/35 No. 1.
GEC vii. p. 11. The outside dates are provided by Bray’s account books, which record in
1475 receipts from Harting and a loan to his then or future brother in-law, and by the
1478 division of the estates: WAM 5479°"B; below, n. 13.
E 101/414/14 £.8; below p. 142.
WAM 5479°" B; C 237/53/168; C 1/84/20.
PROB 11/5 €f.34-34v; SJC D56.186.
The portrait, c. 1500, is little more than a clothes hanger for his arms; and is in the
Magnificat window of Great Malvern Priory; see also Two Tudor Books of Arms, J. Foster
(ed.), (1914), pp. 226, 237. BL MS Add 5833 f.67v reports ‘somewhat different’ arms
from Great Milton and Burnham, without further description: they are likely to be the
arms in the post-1497 version. For 1485, see A Book of Knights Banneret, etc., W.C.
Metcalfe (ed.), (1885), p. 12.
M.M. Condon, ‘Bosworth Field: a Footnote to a Controversy’, The Ricardian, vii
(1987), p. 364; Metcalfe, Knights, pp. 9-12; goods at Blackfriars and Coldharbour in
1503, E 154/2/10 ff.4-6.
R. Somerville, History of the Duchy of Lancaster, i (1953), p. 392; DL 28/6/1A f.7;
J.C. Sainty, Officers of the Exchequer (List and Index Society suppl.ser. 1983), p. 199;
E 36/125 f.7; M.M. Condon, ‘An Anachronism with Intent? Henry VII’s Council
Ordinance of 1491/2’, Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages, R.A. Griffiths and
J.W.Sherborne (eds), (Gloucester 1986), p. 234. Despite Sainty loc.cit., the Handbook
of British Chronology, E.B. Fryde and others (eds), (1986), p. 107, is incorrect, and omits
also Henry VII's first treasurer Archbishop Rotheram, E 405/75 mm. 1-3.
E 401/955, 959; GC 240; cf. Materials ii. pp. 158-9.
The Letters of Sir Reynold Bray, M.M. Condon and D.J. Guth (eds), (in preparation).
See CPR 1485-94, pp. 54, 59, 64, 114, 127, 139, 145; Somerville, i. p. 593; E 159/265
tecorda Mich rot. 23. Not all fees have been traced and summed and Eaton, where Bray’s
actual income may have been out of all proportion to his fees, isa particular problem, see
below, p. 144.
SC 6/Hen VII/1843.
Survey of London: The Parish of Chelsea, W.H. Godfrey (ed.), i. p. 72; T. Faulkner, Historical
and Topographical Description of Chelsea and its Environs (2 vols 1829), i. pp. 308-11.
CP. 40/897 rot.355, 359; ibid. rot.cart. rot.l1-Id; BL Add Ch 70849.
E 368/259 recorda Trin. rot. 9-9d, citing pardon of 7 March.
CP 40/897 rot.cart. rot.1d; SC 6/Hen V1I/1843; CP 25(1)/152/100 Nos. 17, 48, 51.
CP 40/897 rot.cart. rot.1d.
WAM 16355; CP 40/897 rot. 359.
Below, p. 155; G. Baker, History and Antiquities of the County of Northampton (2 vols
1822-30), ii. p. 162; J. Bridges, History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire (2 vols
Oxford, 1791), i. p. 504; Feudal Aids iv. p. 8 (from E 164/17); Metcalfe, Knights, p. 27;
BL Seal CLXVIII.106 : cf. DL 25/2288; BL MS Harl 6157 f.4; WAM MS 43, an
antiphoner associated with Reynold, also shows both quarterings of Bray. For Bray’s
‘historical’ searches, see below, p. 155.
164
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
PROFIT, PIETY AND THE PROFESSIONS
CP 25(1)79/97, Nos. 41, 42; E 136/79/12; GEC vii. pp. 4-11; VCH Gloucestershire
vi. p. 100.
Below, p. 156.
C 137/71/17; E 383/395 Oxon and Berks; CP 40/903 rot. 360d, ibid. rot.cart. rot. if
E 210/5967-70, 5529, 5593: CP 40/773 rot.415; ibid. rot.cart. rot.1; see also below,
p- 000.
CP 40/902 rot. 154-154d; CP 40/906 rot.454; E 199/1 7/1; E 383/380 Suth; E 383/386
Suth; PROB 11/13 f.219v; CIPM Henry VII, iii. No. 626.
Barron, ‘Brays of Shere’, p. 2; Visitation of Bedfordshire, F.A. Blaydon (ed.), (Harleian
Soc. xix, 1884), p. 162; BL MS Add 5833 £.67v; BL MS Harl 6157 f.4.
WAM 5472, 12181-90, passim; C 237/53/168; M.M. Condon, Itinerary of Henry VII (in
Preparation); History of the King’s Works, H. Colvin andothers, (eds), iv (1982), pp. 344-5.
WAM 12190 f.76; WAM 16056; PROB 11/14 f.134;CPR 1485-94, p. 128; E 159/265,
recorda Mich. rot.23; WAM 32350; PROB 11/13 £.219.
CPR 1485-1494, pp. 139, 145; Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII,
W.Campbell (ed.), (2 vols RS 1877), i. p. 61; E 159/263 brevia directa Mich. rot. 11;
GMR 85/6/40 m. 1d. In the confusion of 1485 a patent of 5 September is not impossible,
if unlikely; that of 25 September 1485 is not enrolled.
GMR 85/22/4; GMR 85/13/96; CAD iii. C 3273; CPR 1467-77, pp. 22, 68; RP vi.
pp. 296-7; E 136/214/1; Materials, i. pp. 229, 295; Calendar of Ormond Deeds, E. Curtis
(ed.), (6 vols Dublin 1932), iii. pp. 279-80, 285-7, 319.
CIPM Henry VII, ii, No. 434. The date of the grant is unknown.
CP 40/933 rot.262-262d; CP 25(1)/232/78, Nos. 44-46; cf VCH Surrey iii. p. 114.
SC 11/828, 829, 832; SC 12/18/50; E 101/413/2/3, 56; GMR 85/6/1 m. 1; GMR 85/6/40;
GMR 85/13/99; CP 25(1)/232/78 No. 56.
GMR 85/13/146; CP 25(1)/232/78 No. 56.
GMR 85/6/1; GMR 85/6/18; GMR 85/6/40; CP 25(1)/232/78 Nos. 65, 73; above, n. 36.
The Book of Reckonings and other Memoranda 1500-1612 of the Church of St James, Shere,
E.R. Hougham (ed.), (1978), p. |.
William Smith, William Hody, William Cope, and Hugh Oldham passed from
Margaret's service to the King's; Nicholas Compton was one of Bray's deputies as
receiver-general; Humphrey Coningsby her councillor; and John Shaw her favoured
goldsmith; WAM 12190 ff.93v-98; WAM 32355; WAM 31795; WAM 32364; SC
6/Hen VII/1238; SJC MS D91.17, pp. 3, 9, 26-7, 65, 67;M.G. Underwood, ‘Politics
and Piety in the Household of Margaret Beaufort’, JEH xxxviii (1987), pp. 43-5; and
below, n.73.
WAM 32364, 32390, 32355; SJC MS D91.17 pp. 37-8, 61, 63; SIC MS D91.20 ff. 17,
25; SIC MS D102.9. f.183; Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, N.H. Nicolas (ed.),
(1880), passim.
CPR 1485-94, pp. 114, 231, 315, 380; CIPM Henry VII iii, Nos. 871-2; RP vi.
pp. 275-8; E 159/267, brevia directa Hil. rot.10; fora perceptive general comment, see
M.A. Hicks, ‘Attainder, Resumption and Coercion, 1461-1529’, Parliamentary History
iii (1984), p. 19.
PSO 2/3, 10, 12 July 1 Hen. VII; CPR 1485-1494, p- 230; Hicks, ‘Attainder’,
pp. 19-25; J.R. Lander, ‘Attainder and Forfeiture, 1453-1509", Crown and Nobility
1450-1509 (1976), p. 145; CP 40/935 rot.239-239d; C 54/356 m.13d; Bedfordshire
CRO BS/1; above, n.45.
WAM 3387; WAM 9219 A-D; E 154/2/10, £. 10; M. Howard, The Early Tudor Country
House (1987), pp. 22, 213. See also M.K. Jones, ‘Collyweston — An Early Tudor
Palace’, England in the Fifteenth Century, D. Williams (ed.), (Woodbridge 1987),
pp. 130-132; below, p. 158.
Place Name Soc. Beds, p. 121.
CPR 1485-94, p. 307; CPR 1494-1509, pp. 57, 73; CCR 1485-1500, No. 993;
51.
71.
Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office 165
C 82/157, 1 Dec.; RP vi. pp. 503-6; CIPM Henry VII, iii, No. 993.
CCR 1485-1500, No. 912; Warwickshire Feet of Fines, 1345-1509, L. Drucker (ed.),
(Dugdale Soc. xviii, 1943), pp. 207-8; surrender by copy of court roll: photograph in
Warwicks CRO, for which I am indebted to M. Farr. See also M.A. Hicks, ‘Descent,
Partition and Extinction: The “Warwick Inheritance”, BIHR lii. pp. 125-6; ‘The
Beauchamp Trust 1439-87’, BIHR liv. pp. 135-49; Ministers’ Accounts of the
Warwickshire Estates of the Duke of Clarence 1479-80, R.H. Hilton (ed.), (Dugdale Soc.
xxi, 1952), pp. x-xi. I am indebted to Dr Hicks for help with this point.
M.M. Condon, ‘Ruling Elites in the Reign of Henry VII’, Patronage, Pedigree and Power
in Later Medieval England, C.D. Ross (ed.), (Gloucester 1979), pp. 124-5, 131-2; E
314/49; E 36/130 f.134v; CPR 1485-94, CPR 1494-1509, passim.
CPR 1485-94, pp. 382, 450, 470; CPR 1494-1509, pp. 22, 39; Somerville, i. pp. 561,
631, 636-7.
Condon, ‘Ruling Elites’, p. 116; DL 37/62 m.37d, paraphrased in Somerville, i. p. 524.
Somerville, i. p. 541; M.K. Jones, ‘Lady Margaret Beaufort, the Royal Council, and an
Early Fenland Drainage Scheme’, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology xxi (1986), p. 14;
DL 29/264/4141; DL 29/404/6482; DL 29/404/6483; see also Somerville, i. p. 266:
removal of an unsatisfactory deputy.
CPR 1494-1509, p. 22; VCH Hampshire v. p. 223; E 368/269 recorda Hil. rot.4—5;
E 159/272 brevia directa Hil. rot.1; E 101/413/2/2, ff.14, 26, 36, 41v; SC 6/Hen
VII/669; BLMS Harley Roll A 38 (I owe this reference to Dr M.A. Hicks); E 163/28/13.
DL 29/404/6483, DL 29/264/4141; DL 29/262/4142; DL 29/343/5567.
WAM 16031; perhaps the best and most relevant study of the variable equations
between profit, influence and local office is Letters and Accounts of William Brereton of
Malpas, E.W.Ives (ed.), (Lancs. and Chesh. Rec. Soc., cxvi, 1976), pp. 15-33; see also
R.A. Griffiths, ‘Public and Private Bureaucracies in England and Wales in the Fifteenth
Century’, TRHS 5th ser. (1980), pp. 109-30.
PROB 11/13 £.195.
BROU i. p. 251; SC 6/Hen VII/1373; WAM 9216; The Manuscripts of St George's
Chapel, Windsor Castle, J.N. Dalton (ed.), (Windsor 1957), p. 95; H.E. Reynolds, Wells
Cathedral (Leeds n.d.), pp. 203-4.
Condon, ‘Ruling Elites’, p. 123; C. Rawcliffe, ‘Baronial Councils in the Later Middle
Ages’, Patronage, Pedigree and Power, pp. 101-2; C. Rawcliffe and S. Flower, ‘English
Noblemen and Their Advisers: Consultation and Collaboration in the Later Middle
Ages’, Journal of British Studies xxv (1986), p. 159.
PROB 11/12 ff.29, 75v, 114; PROB 11/9 f.100; PROB 11/13 f.181.
WAM 16080; WAM 16025; WAM 13119; PROB 11/14 f.134; PROB 11/20 f.88; J.
Armitage Robinson, ‘Correspondence of Bishop Oliver King and Sir Reginald Bray’,
Proc. Som. Arch. & Nat. Hist. Soc. lx (1914), pp. 1-4; E 210/9904; Condon and Guth,
Bray Letters.
Condon, ‘Anachronism’, pp. 230, 242-3.
CSPM i. p. 335.
CPR 1485-94, p. 228; GMR 85/6/40; GMR 85/6/18; WAM 12190 ff.83v, 90.
CPR 1485-94, p. 98, 268; E 401/957, 18 Feb; PROB 11/14 f.99.
This is a theme which I hope to develop elsewhere.
CPR 1494-1509, p. 81; C 76/175 m.18; C 76/177 m.10; E 122/142/11 ff.27v-29;
E 122/142/12 m.8;E 101/415/3 f€.6, 14v, 24v; E 101/690/4; Condon, ‘Ruling Elites’, p. 128.
Henry VII Close Roll Calendars need checking against the originals: cf. the trenchant
and entirely justifiable criticisms of K.B. McFarlane in EHR Ixxiv (1959), pp. 114-5.
On the legal records, A.M.B. Simpson, Introduction to the History of the Land Law
(Oxford 1961), pp. 112-31.
On which, J.M.W. Bean, Decline of English Feudalism (Manchester 1968), pp. 104-5;
Simpson, Land Law, pp. 27-43.
166
72.
135
74.
75.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
PROFIT, PIETY AND THE PROFESSIONS
CP 40/962 rot.414; CCR 1500-1509, No. 217; CP 25(1)/152/101 No. 83; C 1/257/
42; above, n.39.
William Hody and Thomas Rogers, Margaret Beaufort’s auditor, until c. 1488: above
n.44 and WAM 12188 f.88v; to the names in n.44 add Richard Empson, attomey of
the duchy, and John Cutte, duchy receiver-general and Bray's receiver at Eaton. The
London merchant Henry Colet is the most frequent ‘occasional’ addition. The list is
compiled from the plea roll refs. cited throughout this paper.
CP 25(1)294/83 Nos. 33-5, 39; CP 40/948 rot.381d; CP 40/962 rot.516; E 36/123 p.
93; E 210/5023; E 101/414/16 £.49; CCR 1485-1500, Nos. 577-8; CPR 1494-1509,
pp. 304-5, 310.
E 40/3987; O. Manning and W. Bray, History and Antiquities of Surrey (3 vols
1804-14), iii. pp. 350-1; cf. a mortgage to Bray by Elizabeth Tanfield, CIPM Henry
VII, iii, No. 1002.
C 1/279/45; CP 25(1)152/100 Nos. 42, 50; WAM 4695 ff.5-5v, 22-23, 24-25v; deed
in the former Middlesex RO Acc. 446/ED1. Drayton was intended for Margaret's
endowment to Westminster, Middx. RO Acc. 446/M.26.
CCR 1485-1500, No. 905; CP 40/937 rot.294d; CP 40/938 rot.cart. rot.2; CP
25(1)30/101 No. 30; PROB 11/13 f.116v; CCR 1500-1509, No. 147; below, p. 153.
CP 40/928 rot.349; cf. CP 25(2)/31/211 No. 13; CP 40/913 rot. 150d, 356d; ibid, rot.
cart. rot. 1-1d; CP 25(1)294/79 Nos. 22, 49; CCR 1485-1500, No. 85; PROB 11/14
f.322v : the account in VCH Middlesex iii. p. 5 is oversimplified. An indenture of
1495 transfers seisin to feoffees undoubtedly his.
C 54/378 No. 30; see also GMR 85/13/149.
C 1/279/45; C 54/378 No. 30.
WAM 16077; SC 2/212/15.
C 1/187/88; cf. CP 25(1)/72/293 No. 54; CP 40/939 rot.cart. rot.2; C 54/378 No. 30;
CPR 1494-1509, p. 84.
GMR 85/6/1; GMR 85/6/18; GMR 85/6/40; WAM 3387; WAM 9219; cf. CP 40/940
rot.113, recorded by way of a plea of debt.
GEC ii. pp. 133-135; below, p. 152; Lives of the Berkeleys, by John Smythe, J. Maclean
(ed.), (2 vols 1883), ii. pp. 128-32, 136, 148-9; M.K. Jones, ‘Sir William Stanley of
Holt: Politics and Family Allegiance in the Late Fifteenth Century’, Welsh History
Review xiv (1988), p. 12. On the bishop, see R.J. Knecht, ‘The Episcopate and the
Wars of the Roses’, University of Birmingham Historical Jounal vi (1957-8), pp. 128-9;
Epistolae Acadamiae Oxonienses, H. Anstey (ed.), (2 vols Oxford Hist. Soc. 1898), ii.
pp. 513-22; CCR 1485-1500 No. 123.
CP 40/905 rot.450; CP 40/914 rot.cart. rot.1.
CCR 1485-1500 Nos. 552, 567, 758 (originals in E 326/12179, E 328/111); CIPM
Henry VII ii. No. 679; CP 25(1)/72/293 No. 60; SC 6/Hen VIII/6878; E 111/1;
E 159/284 recorda Trin. rot.39; C 1/76/33, 124.
CCR 1485-1500 Nos. 293, 294; CPR 1485-94, p. 200; CP 40/903 rot.352;
CP. 40/904 rot.356d; CP 40/905 rot.450; CP 40/910 rot.549; CP 40/914 rot.81, 151d;
CP 40/915 rot.cart. rot.2.
CP 40/905 rot.cart. rot.1; above, n.84.
CP 25(1)/6/83 Nos. 13, 14; CP 25(1)/72/294 No. 123; GEC ii, p. 135; CP 40/962
rot.cart. rot.5; E 101/414/16 ff.110v, 256; WAM 9194; WAM 9195; for Berkeley's
law suits, Lives of the Berkeleys, ii. pp. 154-72.
E 202/183, 187, 192, London & Middx, Som & Dors; E 159/274 recorda Easter
rot.4d; WAM 16067. Fox and Sherborne, however, required the King’s pardon before
they, in turn, could be discharged: CPR 1494-1509, pp. 309, 366; E 159/280 recorda
Trin. rot. 14.
Above, n.86; E 326/12163; Formulare Anglicanum, T. Madox (ed.), (1702),
pp. 213-4, 287-8 (from originals E 327/358, E 328/111); see also C 1/108/51.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office 167
CP 25(1)152/100 No. 40; WAM 4695 ff. 10-16, 22-27; WAM 4700; WAM
16181-2; Middx. RO Acc 446/ED1; SJC MS D91.20 f.30; plea in Middlesex against
Thomas Stillington of Acaster Selby, CP 40/925 rot.168: the plea may, of course, be
directly related to the land sales.
Below, pp. 153-4.
Condon, ‘Ruling Elites’, pp. 131-4; on the crucial importance of 1497, I. Arthurson,
1497: The Fulcrum of a Reign (forthcoming); see also McFarlane, loc.cit., p. 114;
G.R. Elton, ‘Henry VII, Rapacity and Remorse’, Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics
and Government (2 vols Cambridge 1974), i. pp. 58-61.
C 54/355 m.19A dorse; the abstract in CCR 1485-1500 No. 842 is misleading; CP
40/929 rot.356.
CP 40/928 rot.349, 350; WAM 4695 ff. 1-4.
Above, n.51; WAM 622; cf. WAM 655.
Above, pp. 145-6; A.H. Plaisted, The Manor and Parish Records of Medmenham
(1925), pp. 73, 370-6; CP 40/935 rot.301d, 306; CP 40/936 rot.cart. rot.1-1d; CP
25(1)/6/83 No. 30; CP 25(1)/6/84 No. 40; WAM 16035; CP 40/939 rot.306; CP
40/946 rot.cart. rot.1; C 255/8/4 Nos. 15, 22.
CCR 1485-1500 Nos. 1101, 1117; CP 40/946 rot.494d (bowdlerized at rot.491); CP
40/947 rot.310, 347, 349d, 378d; ibid. rot.cart. rot.2d, 3; CP 25(1)/294/80/76; other
parcels were later added, CP25(1)/179/98 No. 74; E 101/415/3 f.288.
WAM 16041; CPR 1494-1509, p. 214.
CCR 1485-1500 Nos. 1094, 1119, 1195; E 326/12184-5; CP 40/949 rot.114d, 364,
402; ibid. rot.cart. rot.3; CP 40/950, rot.315d, 316d; ibid. rot.cart. rot.4; CP 40/951
rot.cart. rot.3; CP 25(1)/13/88 Nos. 31, 33-6; PROB 11/13 f.93v; Bod!. MS DD
Brocas Ci/21; SC 11/63; LR 2/187 ff.33-49; BL Add Ch 6272; KB 27/969 rex rot.5;
KB 29/134 rot.5; W.E. Hampton, ‘The White Rose under the First Tudors’, The
Ricardian vii (1987), pp. 464-6.
Above, p. 151.
CP 25(1)/179/98 No. 58; CP 40/947 rot.cart. rot.1d; E 101/414/16 £.28; cf.
E 154/2/10 £.10; Condon, Itinerary; C 1/110/138; Baker, Northampton i. pp. 492-3;
CCR 1485-1500 No. 611.
CCR 1485-1500, No. 994; Abstract of Feet of Fines relating to the County of Sussex from
1 Edward II to 24 Henry VII, L.F. Salzman (ed.), (Sussex Rec. Soc. xxiii 1916),
pp. 293, 299; WAM 1631; WAM 1596; WAM 9217; KB 27/958 rot.39d; CP 40/946
rot.cart.rot.1; below, p. 156; see also CP 40/921 rot.cart. rot. 1—Id.
CP 40/950 rot.317; CP 25(1)294/80 No. 80; CP 25(1)257/66 No. 36; WAM 16078.
Above, p. 141; CP 40/948, rot.384; rot.cart. rot.1; CP 40/947 rot.315d; rot.cart.
rot.1; Lincolnshire Archive Office Episcopal Reg. XXIII ff.389-389v.
CP 25(1)22/128 Nos. 51, 65; CP 40/952 rot.115, 107d; VCH Buckinghamshire ii.
p. 368; CCR 1500-1509 No. 60; E 101/415/3 f.186.
CP 40/953 rot.230; CP 40/954 rot.cart. rot.1; CP 40/956, rot.cart. rot.1; C 54/378
No. 30; E 368/277 brevia directa Hil. rot.1.; CP 25(1)/6/83 No. 29; CCR 1500-1509
No. 75.
CAD vi, C 5745, C 4651; C 146/10846; CP 25(1)/202/42 no.29; STAC 2/6/34-45;
C 1/279/46-9; C 1/391/57; C 1/612/22-23; C 142/28/29; the deeds are likely to have
been exhibits in court. Cf. VCH Somerset iv. pp. 12-13.
CP 40/962 rot.313; REQ 1/104 ff. 130-132v; REQ 2/13/51; REQ 2/12/178; cf. Baker,
Northampton, i. pp. 162-3 and above, p. 141.
CP 40/957 rot. 104d; CP 40/958 rot.518; CP 40/956 rot.311d; CP 25(1)260/29 No.
18; CP 25(1)/260/29 No. 20; CP 26(1)/30 Trin. 16 Hen VII; WAM 16026.
CP 40/961 rot.360; CCR 1500-1509 No. 201; E 101/546/18; E 159/280 recorda Mich
rot.4; KB 27/963 rex rot. 10.
CP 40/959 rot.116, 106d; CP 25(1)/22/128 No. 70; E 210/5023; above, p. 154.
168
114.
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.
121.
122.
123.
124.
125.
126.
127.
128.
129.
130.
13.
132.
133.
134.
135.
136.
PROFIT, PIETY AND THE PROFESSIONS
CP 40/960 rot.304, 252d; CP 25(1)/128/60-62, 64, 67; BL MS Add 5833 f.67v; CP
25(1)/294/83 No. 42; CP 25(1)6/84 No. 45; CCR 1500-1509, No. 165.
CP 40/959 rot.110, 120 (bowdlerized 113d); CP 40/960 rot.253d, 278d; CP 40/961
rot.415; CP 40/962 rot.517d; CP 40/963 rot.456d; CP 40/964 rot.263d, 305, 412; CP
40/965 rot.107d, 410; CCR 1500-1509 Nos. 100, 144, 166, 233, 278; E 101/415/3
f.285v.
Above, p. 141; WAM 4023; WAM 4029; WAM 5469; WAM 16033-4; PROB 11/11
f.258v; CCR 1500-1509 No. 201.
BL MS Add 59899 ff.7v, 28; CPR 1494-1509, pp. 304, 350-1, 374-9; WAM 4551,
4019, 4046.
E 101/413/2/3, p. 63; C 82/245, 28 June; E 101/219/4 (no entry); CIPM Henry VII ii,
No. 645, iii, No. 1141; PROB 11/13 ff.219-20; CCR 1500-1509 No. 196; cf. CCR
1485-1500 No. 1017; E 326/8096-8105.
Kent Archives Office MS U455/T 138; E 383/485, Surrey & Sussex; CPR 1494-1509,
p. 612; BL Add MS 38133 ff.95-95v; cf. CIPM Henry VI] iii, No. 1141. Dudley
resold the manors almost immediately at a profit.
PROB 11/13 ff.219-220; C 54/378 No. 30.
C.J. Harrison, ‘The Petition of Edmund Dudley’, EHR Ixxxvii (1972), p. 88.
BL Add MS 59899 ff.157, 182; Condon, ‘Ruling Elites’, p. 128.
E 36/214 p. 230; Stoneyhurst College MS 60 f. lv.
GC pp. 325-6.
Elton, ‘Rapacity and Remorse’, pp. 60-1; Plumpton Correspondence, T. Stapleton
(ed.), (CS iv, 1839), pp. 177-8.
Dugdale, Baronage ii. p. 303; McFarlane, EHR lxxiv. p. 114.
PROB 11/13 ff.219-20; PROB 11/15 ff.256v-257; SC 6/Hen VII/1843; A. Gray and
F. Brittain, A History of Jesus College, Cambridge (2nd edn 1979), pp. 27-32; W. St
John Hope, Windsor Castle: An Architectural History (2 vols 1913), ii. pp. 450-58.
E 36/285, ff.8-9.
Above, n.127; WAM 12175; WAM 4023; WAM 16069; WAM 16077; E 154/2/10
ff.8-10.
BL Add MS 59899 ff.157, 182; E 36/214 pp. 441, 474-5; Condon ‘Ruling Elites’,
p. 128.
The evidence is deficient: but only Gilbert Talbot spoke for Bray in 1499. Yet two
years later, this ‘principal benefactor’ of the college was a gartered knight; and by his
death had even obtained papal confirmation of the college's privileges: Register of the
Order of the Garter (2 vols 1724), i. pp. 239-43; entry of obit in August calendar,
‘Notice of a Sarum Breviary in the possession of John Eliot Hodgkin’, Miscellanea of
the Philobiblon Society ix (1865-6): I owe this to Dr N. Ramsay.
GC p.325.
Above, p. 158; BROU i. pp. 462-4; ii. pp. 1147-9. 1396-7; iii. 1721-2; WAM
16035; E 154/2/10; Stoneyhurst MS 60 f.104v.
Condon, ‘Anachronism’, p. 230; Condon and Guth, Bray Letters; Metcalfe, Knights,
p. 27; BL Add MS 46354 f.98v.
SC 11/63.
St John Hope, Windsor Castle, ii. pp. 450-8; S. Anglo, ‘Henry VII’s Dynastic
Hieroglyphs’, The Historian x (1986), pp. 3-8. The precise location of Bray’s tomb is
unknown; and his badges are found in both aisles and transepts, as well as his chantry
— 175 times, by one count: M. Bond, The Romance of St George’s Chapel, Windsor
Castle (14th edn Windsor 1987), 22. He would, however, perhaps have appreciated
the irony by which his chantry has been appropriated for the chapel shop, the profits
of which contribute to the fabric fund : a truly ‘perpetual alms’.
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